The Week End Blog
The Best of My Choice My Delight
was updated today

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During Wind and Rain 

They sing their dearest songs— 

       He, she, all of them—yea, 

       Treble and tenor and bass, 

            And one to play; 

      With the candles mooning each face. . . . 

            Ah, no; the years O! 

How the sick leaves reel down in throngs! 

       They clear the creeping moss— 

       Elders and juniors—aye, 

       Making the pathways neat 

            And the garden gay; 

       And they build a shady seat. . . . 

            Ah, no; the years, the years, 

See, the white storm-birds wing across. 

       They are blithely breakfasting all— 

       Men and maidens—yea, 

       Under the summer tree, 

            With a glimpse of the bay, 

       While pet fowl come to the knee. . . . 

            Ah, no; the years O! 

And the rotten rose is ript from the wall. 

       They change to a high new house, 

       He, she, all of them—aye, 

       Clocks and carpets and chairs 

          On the lawn all day, 

       And brightest things that are theirs. . . . 

          Ah, no; the years, the years; 

Down their carved names the rain-drop ploughs.

-o0o-

A Merrymaking In Question

"I will get a new string for my fiddle,

And call to the neighbours to come,

And partners shall dance down the middle

Until the old pewter-wares hum:

And we'll sip the mead, cyder, and rum!"

From the night came the oddest of answers:

A hollow wind, like a bassoon,

And headstones all ranged up as dancers,

And cypresses droning a croon,

And gurgoyles that mouthed to the tune.

-o0o-

On a Midsummer Eve

I idly cut a parsley stalk,

And blew therein towards the moon;

I had not thought what ghosts would walk

With shivering footsteps to my tune.

I went, and knelt, and scooped my hand

As if to drink, into the brook,

And a faint figure seemed to stand

Above me, with the bygone look.

I lipped rough rhymes of chance, not choice,

I thought not what my words might be;

There came into my ear a voice

That turned a tenderer verse for me.

-o0o-

First Sight of Her and After

A day is drawing to its fall

I had not dreamed to see;

The first of many to enthrall

My spirit, will it be?

Or is this eve the end of all

Such new delight for me?

I journey home: the pattern grows

Of moonshades on the way:

"Soon the first quarter, I suppose,"

Sky-glancing travellers say;

I realize that it, for those,

Has been a common day.

-o0o-

At the Word "Farewell"

She looked like a bird from a cloud

        On the clammy lawn,

Moving alone, bare-browed

        In the dim of dawn.

The candles alight in the room

        For my parting meal

Made all things withoutdoors loom

        Strange, ghostly, unreal.

The hour itself was a ghost,

        And it seemed to me then

As of chances the chance furthermost

        I should see her again.

I beheld not where all was so fleet

        That a Plan of the past

Which had ruled us from birthtime to meet

        Was in working at last:

No prelude did I there perceive

        To a drama at all,

Or foreshadow what fortune might weave

        From beginnings so small;

But I rose as if quicked by a spur

        I was bound to obey,

And stepped through the casement to her

        Still alone in the gray.

"I am leaving you . . . Farewell!" I said,

As I followed her on

By an alley bare boughs overspread;

"I soon must be gone!"

Even then the scale might have been turned

Against love by a feather,

- But crimson one cheek of hers burned

When we came in together.

-o0o-

On the Death-bed

‘I'll tell—being past all praying for—

Then promptly die. . . . He was out at the war,

And got some scent of the intimacy

That was under way between her and me;

And he stole back home, and appeared like a ghost

One night, at the very time almost

That I reached her house. Well, I shot him dead,

And secretly buried him. Nothing was said.

‘The news of the battle came next day;

He was scheduled missing. I hurried away,

Got out there, visited the field,

And sent home word that a search revealed

He was one of the slain; though, lying alone

And stript, his body had not been known.

‘But she suspected. I lost her love,

Yea, my hope of earth, and of Heaven above;

And my time's now come, and I'll pay the score,

Though it be burning for evermore.’

-o0o-

In the Study

He enters, and mute on the edge of a chair

Sits a thin-faced lady, a stranger there,

A type of decayed gentility;

And by some small signs he well can guess

That she comes to him almost breakfastless.

“I have called—I hope I do not err—

I am looking for a purchaser

Of some score volumes of the works

Of eminent divines I own,—

Left by my father—though it irks

My patience to offer them.” And she smiles

As if necessity were unknown;

"But the truth of it is that oftenwhiles

I have wished, as I am fond of art,

To make my rooms a little smart,

And these old books are so in the way.”

And lightly still she laughs to him,

As if to sell were a mere gay whim,

And that, to be frank, Life were indeed

To her not vinegar and gall,

But fresh and honey-like; and Need

No household skeleton at all. 

-o0o-